Portable devices are known that are adapted for use with a supply roll of masking tape and are adapted to apply the tape to surfaces including along the top edge surfaces of baseboards and the like that are long narrow edge surfaces disposed at about right angles to closely adjacent wall surfaces. U.S. Pat. No. 3,900,362 describes such a portable device which includes two generally cylindrical application rollers rotatably mounted on a roller frame in spaced relationship with their axes parallel and ends of the rollers projecting away from the roller frame being generally aligned, and a tape hub having a periphery adapted to be frictionally received coaxially within a central opening in a core of the tape roll is mounted on the roller frame for rotation about its axis which is parallel to the axis of the application rollers, with the tape hub and the application rollers defining portions of a path for the tape being unwound from the tape roll with the rear surface of the backing of the tape from the tape roll disposed partially around the periphery of the first application roller and extending from the periphery of the first application roller to the periphery of the second application roller. The device is intended to be manually grasped and moved along a surface, and the application rollers each have a thin axially outwardly projecting ridge at one end that can engage an edge of structure to which the device is applying the tape to insure that the tape is applied in a desired location on the structure. While that device described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,900,362 is effective for applying tape along surfaces, including along narrow edge surfaces, it does not provide a convenient means for manually engaging the device during such application of tape, and does not provide effective means for severing tape applied to a surface from a supply length of the tape on the device.